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Nerval's Lobster writes "Flappy Bird might be kaput, but its hilariously awkward hero is serving another useful purpose in its afterlife: teaching people how to code. Flappy Bird, a free mobile game for Android and iOS that asks the player to guide the titular avian through an obstacle course of vertical pipes, became a sensation earlier this year, seizing the top spots on the Apple and Google Play app stores. Its creator, Dong Nguyen, said the game earned him an average of $50,000 a day through in-app advertising — but that didn't stop him from yanking the game offline in early February. Now Code.org has resurrected Flappy Bird, Phoenix-style, from the smoking wreckage, with a free tutorial that allows anyone with a bit of time to code his or her very own version of the game. There's no actual code to learn, thanks to a visual interface that allows budding developers to drag 'blocks' of commands into place. 'Flappy Bird recently met its untimely death. We might've been tempted to cry all day and give up on spreading computer science (not really, but R.I.P Flappy Bird),' read a note on Code.org's blog. 'Instead, we built a new drag-and-drop tutorial that lets you build your own Flappy game — whether it's Flappy Bird, or Flappy Easter Bunny, Flappy Santa, Flappy Shark with Lasers, Flappy Fairy or Flappy Underwater Unicorn.' Childish? Maybe. But it could help draw people into coding for fun or profit."

Just because he pulled the game does not mean he gave up rights to it.

What rights are you talking about here. The point was drag'n'drop programming so it can't be the code.Isn't the graphics a blatant ripoff from Super Mario Brothers? I think Nintendo have the rights to that.The music/sound? I haven't played Flappy Bird but I doubt the lessons include audio from Flappy Bird.What is left? A sidescroller where you push to jump/adjust altitude. Sounds like a simplified version of Gumshoe but there are probably a bunch of titles out there with the same concept.At most he can argu

"Flappy Bird might be kaput, but its hilariously awkward hero is serving another useful purpose in its afterlife: teaching people how to code."
and
"There's no actual code to learn, thanks to a visual interface that allows budding developers to drag 'blocks' of commands into place."

I'll admit all I read was those two lines:)
The only exception I take - popularizing code like this - is we get a flood of useless coders out there, who don't know how a compiler/linker etc etc work. Not to say we don't already have that.. just worse.

On the other hand, sparking that interest is fairly key. Shrug, if it works, it works.

It's no more a tutorial on programming, than watching the Nature channel is an education to become a biologist. It might spark someone's interest, but I do think that interest would have been sparked regardless.

It uses a Scratch [mit.edu]-like interface, which is "coding" in every sense but typing. You still need to understand loops, conditionals, etc., and you have to learn how to structure a program. The only thing you don't have to know is the low-level syntax, such as correct spelling of keywords. It is a very good introduction to programming, especially for young kids that haven't learned to touch type yet.

Yes, it's Scratch-like in construction -- but it excludes concepts like loops and branching. This tutorial is really not much more than configuring a couple of parameters in a pre-built flappy-bird game.

I'm a big fan of Scratch, of code.org, and of teaching kids how to code. But sad to say this offering misses the point entirely.

No kidding. For the measly sum of $5,000 a day, I will happily chain Dong Nguyen to a chair and whip him constantly until he bangs out another app that puts anywhere near as many eyes in front of those ads.

I do that (to a degree) when I'm learning something new, like a new language, or a new library in a language I already know. So, basically when I'm writing toy programs to figure out how something works. As you start to build something more serious, the verbatim code that you find online is likely to become less useful (although it can still be useful for the concepts contained in it). If you can exclusively build your programs out of code you pull out of a search engine, then you're either making something

I still haven't played it or even watched a video about it. I do not robotically follow every hipster trend that happens. As the game has been all over the place, I have seen a couple of screenshots of the game like the one in the article. But I will probably just pass this one. I'm not criticizing the game in any way though.

Flappy Bird didn't gain popularity thanks to a great and innovative concept. It succeeded thanks to 1. initially fake reviews from the author 2. many people downloading it 3. and talking about it (basically asking the same question as yours) 4. more downloads. In other words, the snowball effect...

Flappy Bird didn't gain popularity thanks to a great and innovative concept. It succeeded thanks to 1. initially fake reviews from the author 2. many people downloading it 3. and talking about it (basically asking the same question as yours) 4. more downloads. In other words, the snowball effect...

Flappy Bird didn't gain popularity thanks to a great and innovative concept. It succeeded thanks to 1. initially fake reviews from the author 2. many people downloading it 3. and talking about it (basically asking the same question as yours) 4. more downloads. In other words, the snowball effect...

I don't think there exists a good 'why' for games like this getting ridiculously popular. It seems every so often a game will hit a few social circles in just the right way, and enough people will talk about it that it infects other socials, eventually propagating to where it shows up on 'Featured' and 'Hot' lists, which sets off another round of growth.

At least this one's not another variation on Bejeweled (which was itself very derivative).

It's really tough to do. If you want to make a for loop, I'd really rather write it than drag the block. Making anything moderately complex is hard to make. I saw one that had multiple types of for, while, ifs and forget nested loops. Variable become hard to keep track of and I felt like I had so many extras. I can't believe anyone actually makes games that way.

Maybe he came to realize that, just like every other successful game on a portable, most of those "relaxing little moments" are actually when people are sitting and passing time (and other things) on the pot.

The summary has some pretty good suggestions for new Flappy games.
I thought we could so with some more ideas though.
I think an all open source version called Flappy Stallman, would be a good start.
Also Flappy ears. In honour of my girlfriends dog, who I am sure will one day lift off while shaking its head.

If a developer chooses to pull their own app from the itunes store for iOS devices, will the app get deleted from people's phones who may have already installed it the next time they try to sync with their library?

If a developer chooses to pull their own app from the itunes store for iOS devices, will the app get deleted from people's phones who may have already installed it the next time they try to sync with their library?

No, Apple will not delete anything from your phone. Apple will also not delete anything from a manual sync with iTunes.

If you backup only to iCloud, lose your phone, buy a new one, you are SOL. When you restore to an iCloud backup, only the apps currently available will come down.

I started doing some of the lessons. Like any good programmer, I set about trying to do things in a way that was not intended. I was most disappointed to see that my modifications didn't work in the sandbox. Instead I was just prodded to do things in the approved fashion. It's a wonder that anyone learns anything these days.